Jack White, Eddie Vedder Pitch Neil Young’s Pono

Neil Young isn’t the only rock star pitching Pono. To introduce the Kickstarter campaign that he’s using to launch his new high-fidelity digital music system, Young solicited video testimonials from a who’s who of the music world. From frontmen like the Jacks (Johnson and White) to producers with legendary ears (Rick Rubin, T Bone Burnett), dozens of artists and other insiders evangelize about the sound quality of Young’s product. The result is a 12-minute infomercial in which the MP3, the current digital standard, is savaged as an inferior product. Eddie Vedder proclaims that music, “his drug of choice” is “now potent again.” Stephen Stills cackles. Kid Rock appears shirtless.

Many consumers are already sold. Following Young’s Pono presentation Tuesday at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, the Kickstarter campaign reached its target of $800,000 in less than a day. As of Wednesday afternoon, nearly 5,000 backers had pledged a total of $1.6 million in funding for PonoMusic, which will sell portable music players and downloads of high-resolution files via an online store. Many of the crowd-funding participants ponied up for $400 editions of the triangular Pono player, including “signature series” models from Beck, Herbie Hancock, Lenny Kravitz and others. Whether the enthusiasm of early adopters forecasts mainstream success for Pono is unclear.

In the Kickstarter video, some of the Pono evangelists seem equally jazzed about getting an audio demonstration in Young’s tricked-out LincVolt, the name for the white 1959 Lincoln Continental that he modified for optimal fuel efficiency (and apparently a booming system). Which raises the question: What were they listening to inside his vehicle? A handful of Pono buyers might find out. Thirty backers pledged at least $5,000 for a VIP and “listening party with Neil Young.”

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